Shades of Babysitting
by EmpireofShadow
Summary: Takes place in StarVix's Baby Sonic Universe. When both Knuckles and Rouge are mysteriously changed back into toddlers, how will Shade manage to take care of both them and the Master Emerald? Not a great summary....
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: Hello, and welcome all to my own, baby Sonic story, began by StarVix. My own story will take place after Metal Nanny, but before Metal, We Toddlerized Ourselves, and will be written in a first person perspective of Shade (see Sonic Chronicles). In all honesty, I haven't a clue as to where I'm going to take this story, but I know I've had fun writing this first chapter, so I've got no problem winging it. Honest reviews are appreciated.**

**Disclaimer: THE BIG ROCK OWNS ALL!!**

* * *

"And so, it is important duty to guard the Master Emerald, because if it ever fell into the wrong hands, blah blah blah blah," began Knuckles, or as I called him the bane of my existence, for the umpteenth time, in the pass hour. With me, the only audience to his ranting, contemplating which rock would best serve as a gag, or ear muffs for that matter.

Who knew that a guy that spent his whole life alone on an island would feel the need to be so talkative.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that he lets me stay on Angel Island after the whole, Argus fiasco, but the fact that he felt like he needed to tell me Every..Single..Freaking..Day how important his job was, was beginning to get on my nerves (the finger sized gauges on the rock I was currently sitting on attested to that).

Heck, I even imagined that the stupid Emerald looked mad from his incessant rambling.

"So," he continues, not knowing that I was considering lodging the man sized boulder in the far corner down his trachea, "because of the sins of Knuckles tribe, long ago, it is now my duty to protect the Master Emerald from all harm."

'_Yeah,' _I think to myself, picking at a piece of grit in my fingernails,_ 'I know. I was kinda there.'_ Of course, telling him this would only result in him getting defensive about his own Echidna history, usually by accusing me of driving his people to such an extreme, so I opted not to voice that thought.

Giving up on my ideas of silencing the chatter box, I, instead, idly watched as a fly flew around the room, before finally settling on Knuckles precious Master Emerald. _'Poor thing,'_ I think to myself, knowing precisely what was going to happen next.

On cue, Knuckles stopped his incessant rambling and, instead, turned to face the Master Emerald, wild eyed. He stared at the poor unfortunate fly for a minute, and I swear I could see the thing smoking, before Knuckles lashed out, ending the creature (in my head, I could imagine a little fly widow, crying over her deceased husband, with their three hundred kids).

After said crime was committed, Knuckles walked over to the corner where he stored his Windex in case of such emergencies, his lecture completely forgotten as he, meticulously rid every square inch of the Master Emerald of bug goo.

Satisfied that Knuckles would be busy for the next hour or two, I slipped out of the stuffy cave and into the blazing sun.

Taking a deep breath to settle myself, I went to explore the Island, something I had taken to doing in my spare time. Taking note of Knuckles cantaloupe garden (something he obsessed over nearly as much as his precious Emerald) I noticed that some of his larger cantaloupe were missing.

Knowing exactly what this meant, I waited a few seconds and, surely enough, soon heard Knux yelling his head off from within the cave.

"GET YOUR PAWS OFF MY EMERALD, BAT GIRL!"

Rouge the Bat, the second bane of my existence. It's not so much I don't like her, but I do, in part, blame her for Knuckles being so paranoid. What, with her near weekly attempts to steal the Master Emerald (sometimes, I swear she's just as obsessive over the darn thing as Knuckles', and that's saying quite a bit) and her way of putting said Guardian into a foul mood for the rest of the day.

Sighing, I, reluctantly, turned back to the cave to see if I could help Knux with our intruder.

At least, I was going to, but the second I turned around, my foot, accidently, got caught in one of Knuckles traps and I ended up looking upward to the ground 25ft above me.

Muttering a few words that would have gotten me dishonorably discharged from the Nocturnes Army, I powered up the Leech Blade on my arm and took a swipe at the offensive rope, wrapped around my ankle.

The good news was that I managed to slice cleanly through it on my third attempt, the bad news was that I made an ungraceful landing on my head, with a dull thud.

Luckily, as has been shone by Knuckles on many occasions, echidnas have very hard heads (more like steel really), so, instead of caving in my skull, I only ended up with a mild concussion, Chaos Emeralds swarming in my vision.

Shaking my head to clear it, I committed to myself to have Knuckles draw a map of this island, with all the booby traps thoroughly marked, if it was the last thing he ever did.

It was only then that I noticed that Knuckles had stopped yelling. Finding this to be very unusual (because even when he's unconscious I've head Knux screaming at imaginary intruders……that guy really needs to get a life), I quickly get to my feet and headed for the cave.

It should be pointed out at this point, that I had grown up as a warrior. I had watched as civilizations fell before the mighty Nocturnes, with me being the second only to Lord Ix himself. I had seen as enormous tentacles ripped us from our home and took us to a dimension filled with creatures that would come from your nightmares, beings made of rock (with speech patterns that made you want to hit your head against them), beings composed of only energy and metal (with a hankering for war, that put even Ix's to shame), beings who are one but also many (and smelled worse than a skunk in a chicken manure plant), and beings who looked like manta rays and could invade your very mind (they even revealed publicly, my own love of……none of your business).

The point being, that nothing much surprised me any more.

When I got to the cave I saw both Knuckles and Rouge fighting, but when they noticed me, they stopped, with Knuckles getting in one last hit in, which caused Rouge to wail with all her might. Oh, did I mention they were both now around two years old?

This was, by and far, the strangest and scariest thing I have ever seen in my entire weird life.


	2. Quest for the Holy Signal

**Author's Note: Wow! Updating a story on the same day I published it, that's a new one for me. So far, it's not been very text heavy, has it? I'll try to change that starting next chapter. Please read and review.**

**Disclaimer: …… I live in a shack (not really) do you think I own Sega?**

* * *

Have you ever heard a bat wail? Think of taking the world's sharpest nails to the world's largest blackboard and placing the world's largest in front of it, and you'll get a tenth of the ultrasonic produced in the reverberating chamber we were all currently in.

Forced to think quickly or risk being deafened I produce a Chaos Emerald Knuckles let me keep charge of (despite knowing that the Chaos Emeralds were unbreakable I swore I saw a crack appearing in it) and threw it towards the screaming toddler Rouge.

Fortunately, it seems that being a toddler had not affected Rouge's love for shiny things, and she immediately stopped crying and, instead, reached to grab the Emerald, cooing happily.

Taking a minute to let the ringing in my ears to go away, I asked the question that was forefront in my mind. "What happened here?"

Toddler Knuckles scuffed his shoe once, looking uncommonly subdued, but then looked up with some of the same defiance I was used to seeing and pointed towards the still cooing Rouge. "She didi it!"

At this proclamation, Rouge immediately looked up with a rather indignant expression on her face. "You hitties me!" she screamed at the little Echidna, and then sidled over to me, still clutching her precious shiny, and showed me a small bruise on her arm, the size of a small penny. "You kissies, and make better?" she asked me with all the fake innocence the adult Rouge had ever managed.

Still more than a little shocked from the entire ordeal, and not wishing for her to have a repeated wailing performance, I opted to bend over and lightly kissed her booboo.

Smiling broadly, she proceeded to wrap her arms around my neck and commanded, "Up!"

Faced with the consequences of being strangled (who knew Rouge was so strong?) I complied, picking her up. Once I did so, she immediately gave me another smile and then turning around to stick her tongue out at a pouting Knuckles.

Sighing loudly, determining that I would get any answers from the two bickering infants, I decide to do the next most logical thing. "Let's go call Tails."

Now, it might surprise some people that Knuckles would allow any type of technology onto his island, let alone cell phone which could be traced…………and, truth be told, he hadn't. I had actually snuck the cell phone I was currently using onto the Island a week after Knuckles had invited me up, but, seeing that Knuckles was busy digging a hole at the moment (proclaiming that a Worm had insulted him), I doubt that he'll very much mind if I used it now.

Or, at least, I would be if I could find any service on this spit of rock. We were in the gosh darn stratosphere, how could I not be getting any service?

Thus, did I begin my search for the holy signal, crossing plains and mountains (oddly there were castles at random intervals, with odd Mushroom people inside the that told me that the Princess was at the next castle), making deals with the Island's resident E.T. (some wakko wearing weird robes, speaking broken English, and seeming to float (I know what your thinking, no it is not Black Doom "cough" "cough" Fawful "cough")), and over coming beasts that lay only in legends, (one of which called herself HookTail and I was forced to defeat with a cricket).

………Actually, (with the exception of the second) I just went around asking, "Can you hear me now?"

But, finally, I did manage to get a signal…….on the top of a Ferris wheel (why there's a Ferris wheel on Angel Island is a question open to debate). Silently rejoicing, I quickly dialed Tails number and, after two or three rings Tails picked up.

"Who is it?" asked Tails, sounding out of breath (in the background I could here something like a herd of elephants crashing through an Antique store, and someone was yelling, "Fwoggy!? Where are you little Buddy?" at frequent intervals). "Excuse me for a minute," says Tails.

At that point, I heard something akin to a lawn mower in the background, followed by someone screaming hysterically, followed by a wet plop, followed by the sound of two cars colliding, and then sudden silence.

I paused for a moment, waiting expectantly, while the two infants were playing tag (actually Rouge had stolen Knuckles left shoe and Knuckles was chasing after her trying to get it back).

Finally, Tails picked up on the other line, and I got a chance to explain what had happened.

There was a significant pause as Tails considered what I had told him, but he eventually answered, saying, "I might have an idea, but it'd be better if you'd brought them over here so I can run some tests."

My first instinct was to say no, Knuckles constant warnings that the Master Emerald having to be constantly protected having been deeply engraved in me after all his lectures, but then I decided that, since I was taking the person most likely to take the Master Emerald with me and I wouldn't be gone that long, I had no choice.


	3. Get Away Massa Emered Returns!

**Author's Note: "blank stare" Anyone who comments on its shortness will have alligators set free in their toilets.**

**Disclaimer: blah, blah, Sega, blah, owns, blah, blah, blah, blah, Sonic**

In retrospect, I don't know why I thought it would be a simple matter to take the infants over to Tails, maybe it was that bump on the head. After all, when had anything in my life thus far been even remotely easy.

Anyway, I turned around to tell the tots that we were leaving, only to find that (surprise) they weren't there anymore.

Sighing irritably, sorely tempted to just leave them to their own devices for a while, I reluctantly started to look for them.

Now, I think, would be a good time to mention the size of Angel Island. Simply stated, it's big….really really big, big enough that if any Physicist saw that it actually floated he would have an aneurism.

Needless to say, that it was very hard to find the little hooligans, made even harder the traps Knuckles had set up all around the Island.

……But I did find them, eventually, sore, tired, and dirtier than I have ever been before in my life, but I found them. Although, the fact that they were screaming at each other at the top of their little lungs, did help though.

Pushing my way through, yet another, thorn bush, I found myself in Knuckles' cantaloupe garden and in the middle of a, by now, very familiar, albeit miniature, scuffle between the Guardian and Thief.

And just like last time, Rouge stopped as soon as she noticed I was there and proceeded to open her mouth wide. Fortunately for my ears, this time, I manage to get to her before she let out her other worldly wail, and managed to cover her mouth with my hand.

"Don't even think about," I hissed at her, by now at the end of what little patience I had.

Once she nodded, fervently at that, I turn my attention to Knuckles.

I had been expecting to see the same kind of stubbornness I had come to expect from the Guardian, but, instead, I saw something I had never seen before in his eyes.

Fear.

For a second, I let myself consider how I must look to him right now, probably, between all the thorns and mud, something akin to Big Foot perhaps.

Forcing my anger down, and placing it in a place I liked to call Ix, I asked what was wrong this time.

Rather lamely, he says, "She trieded to take the Massa Emered." Showing me what was distinctly not the Master Emerald, but, rather, a very large cantaloupe.

I felt my eye twitch as I debated whether or not to mention this little fact to him or not.

Unfortunately, the decision was taken out of my hands as little Rouge decided rush up to Knuckles and take said cantaloupe from his outstretched hands.

"MINE!" she shouted in the dumbstruck Knuckles' face, before running behind my leg.

Knuckles soon came out of his daze and proclaimed, "Givie back Wouge!" before chasing her in a circle around my legs.

Oh, how I hate my life.

-Elsewhere-

Metal Sonic was not happy.

But, then again, it was rare that he was ever happy, so this fact, like the many times before, was ignored.

Today's misery was that he was assigned lookout duty on Angel Island. Eggman had an idea to take it over as soon as it was left unprotected. A good plan in theory, but with one major drawback.

THERE WAS ALWAYS SOMEONE ON THE ISLAND!!

To add injury to insult, he assigned both Metal Knux and Shadow Android with me.

"WHAT'S THAT!" cried Metal Knuckles, pointing toward small dot on the screen.

I barely scanned what he was pointing at before replying, "For the 113 time, its called a bird."

"Oh……what do they do?"

Not for the first time, I wished I could take Tylenol. "Why don't you go stand under some power lines and find out," I suggest.

It was then that I took note that Shadow Android hadn't said anything in over 10 minutes. Normally, I would be grateful for this fact, but I also felt curious, and turned to inquire him on his silence.

He up bolted quickly off the chair he was sitting in, and, I noticed as he did so that he had hid something behind his back. But, before I got to question this odd behavior, another voice preempted my concentration.

"What's that?" asked Metal Knuckles, yet again.

I turned my attention back to him, fully intending to do the same thing the real Knuckles had done to him not that long ago, but something on the screen caught my attention.

Actually, three somethings heading away from Angel Isle.


	4. World Breaking, Universe Hating

**Author's Note: I haven't forgot about this!**

**Disclaimer: The character's belong to Sega, this story belongs at the bottom of a very deep well.**

'This is Tails house?' I couldn't help but think to myself, checking the address that I had been given.

Now, don't get me wrong, there was nothing particularly wrong with it, it just wasn't what I had been expecting.

It looked a little like a garage…….A small garage.

Considering what I remembered about Tails, I was expecting something a bit….more.

But, as if to confirm that this was indeed the place, Big suddenly flew through a window, on the receiving end of a large bore 19A Photo Ion Beam.

……Don't ask how I know how I know what kind of weapon it was.

Of course, this had as much affect on Big's person as a feather, so after picking himself he continued along his business as if nothing had happened.

"Froggy! Where are you little Buddy?"

A sliver of genuine fear writhed its way into my gut, and I immediately looked around hoping to hide before he spotted me.

Alas, it was not to be. Apparently, the kids decided that Big was the coolest thing ever (go figure), and I had to make sure that he didn't accidentally squash them.

I don't want to bore you with all the details, (or the multiple times he said the name Froggy……I promised myself to make them a freaking extinct species at the first opportunity I got!) so I'll just say that I told him I saw Froggy over on the interstate.

I feel no guilt!

Sighing a long breath of relief, I step over to Tails' door and proceed to press the doorbell.

A sound between a cat coughing up a hairball and a dying jet engine greeted my ears.

Instead of Tails answering the door though, instead it was Sonic that opened it.

"Hey Shade," he greeted amiably.

"Hey Sonic," I responded, "Is Tails here?" Stupid question, who else would have used a Photo cannon to get rid of Big……. Except, maybe Eggman.

"Yeah, he's around," He says, and starts to look around. "So where's the tikes?" He smiles a large, slightly evil smile and takes out a camera. "I'm not missing this opportunity for black mail."

If this were an anime I would have sweat dropped.

It was at this point that Sonic finally saw Knuckles and, before I could blink, He disappeared right before my eyes. Turning around, I could see that he was confronting tike Knuckles, but I was otherwise distracted when I felt something gripping my leg.

So I looked down, expecting to actually see Rouge asking that I pick her up again. Imagine my surprise when something that reminded me of the vermin I once saw crawling around the Zoah city gripping my leg, and flashing far too sharp teeth.

I reacted in a distinctly unwarrior like way, yelping and kicking my leg in an attempt to dislodge my uninvited passenger.

The little…..thing did come loose, fortunately, and at the same time, I heard something distinctly crack. I quickly turned my attention back to a smug Knuckles and a now keeled over Sonic, who was rubbing his leg furiously, easy to guess what happened there.

Taking my attention off the two for now, I return my attention to looking for my assailant, who, after thinking about it, must be Sonic's pet chao Zombie Knuckles told me about. As soon as I saw where he was at, only one thought crossed my mind. 'Oh heck no.'

He was on top of a sufficiently freaked out toddler Rouge's head. As I watched, I saw a small globule of drool leak out of the weird chao's mouth and land smack dab on the bridge of Rouge's nose.

I immediately sprinted, warrior instincts kicking in as I activated my headgear which had a sonic dampener built in. I didn't run for Rouge, I doubt I could have stopped what was about to happen, but instead at Knuckles. Grasping him and putting myself between him and Rouge.

Then the world broke.

-----------

Metal Sonic had considered self destructing after the fifth trap he had fallen into on this stupid island. I was currently completely submerged in a disguised pit of quick sand, this being the tenth trap I'd fallen into today. Needless to say that I was now considering how best to take Knuckles out with me (or perhaps I'd substitute Metal Knuckles instead).

After reporting to Humpty Dumpty (a.k.a. Eggman) that both the echidnas and the bat were away from the island he had immediately ordered all three of us to go to there and seize the Master Emerald.

Personally, I would have rather have had Eggman's old defective badniks Cluck and Scratch instead of these two nimrods I was forced to work with. We hadn't really made any progress at all.

Shadow Android kept straying off with what I later found out to be a car magazine. Ogling the pictures with a somewhat disturbing goofy look on his face.

Metal Knuckle also kept straying, but instead was exploring all manner of irrelevant things from leaves, to a line of ants, to even the dirt. At least, that's what I thought he was doing when I caught him digging into the ground, but he instead told me that a worm had insulted his mother…….There were so many things wrong with that statement that I could only gape at him for a moment.

Then, of course, there was the problem that I kept on falling into these stupid traps the Guardian had set up. I attributed the fact that I seemed the only one of the three to fall into these traps not on my own incompetence, but rather the fact that the universe most definitely hated him. At this point, the feeling was completely mutual.


End file.
